Photo Epicenter in San Francisco will present AS ABOVE SO BELOW, an interdisciplinary group exhibition, from November 14 through December 12, 2008. It will feature work by local and international artists in photography, installation, sound, painting, video, the gallery’s answering machine (415-550-0701), and a green screen sculpture for psychic activation. A large selection of scripts, stories, visual publications and other texts commissioned from writers will also be on display. The exhibition is free and open to the public, with an opening reception on Friday, November 14, from 6-9 p.m.

Curated by Chris Fitzpatrick, AS ABOVE SO BELOW takes its title from the Emerald Tablet and has been organized in response to a series of photographs that document the Chaitén volcano as it erupted during a lightning storm last May. Diverse themes—from the fungal Nordic roots of Christmas to claims over Nikolai Tesla—will emerge in each artwork and text, presenting a seemingly disparate series of triggers that will elicit an infinite combination of subjective narratives.AS ABOVE SO BELOW features an active papier mâché volcano by the collectiveAnonymous Orphan, vinyl wall text and thousands of matchbooks by Francesca Bennett &Nicholas Matranga, a left-handed painting by James Bradley, video by Aleksandra Domanović, a reappearing photographic composite by Gerald Edwards III, retroactive computer-generations of Carlos Gutierrez’s photographs of the Chaiten eruption, photography and mushrooms picked by Uri Korn, a light box by Bessie Kunath, a quantic experiment by Raimundas Malašauskas, video by Daniel Oates-Kuhn, an immaterial evacuation by Post Brothers, a message smoked on the gallery ceiling and an installation outside its window by Rick Predovic, as well as a video by Brad Troemel created to induce seizures. Alternate scripts and other texts written by Francesca Bennett & Nicholas Matranga, Jon Frechette, Israel Posinov/Geoffrey Post/Post Brothers, Ray Potes, Sally Szwed, and many more will be displayed on a large table with Mandarin subtitles to a non-existent film by Xiaoyu Weng, a children’s coloring book by Michelle Y. Hyun, and new visual publications by Anonymous Orphan.

During the opening reception on November 14th from 6pm – 9pm, Popcorn modified with colors and flavors inspired by the Chaitén eruption will be served, Post Brothers will stage a reading enacting a scene from grandpa Posinov’s The Capsule. At the closing receptionon December 12th from 6pm-9pm, two performances of Van Halen’s “Eruption” on the electric guitar will occur simultaneously.